Gianluca Cascioli, composer and pianist, was born in Turin in 1979. His close association with Beethoven became apparent already in 1994 when he won the Micheli competition, centred on works by the great German master and contemporaries. In the following decades he performed the Trio Op. 97 with Rostropovich, Zimmermann and Vengerov, all the concertos and the Fantasia Op. 80 with conductors like Abbado, Chung, Honeck, Muti, Maazel and Minasi, also recording with Minasi the version of the Concerto Op. 58 with the original variants. Strongly featured in as many as eight Beethoven recording projects is much music for solo piano and the complete sonatas for violin and piano with Sayaka Shoji.